One Great Adventure

Aboard! Up in the ship, finally!

My dad woke me up around 5am! I think at that time I just closed my eyes! I’m not in deep sleep yet. I guess they were the one who is excited. Anyway, I stood up right away because I don’t want my dad to drag me down and bring me to the shower. I ate my breakfast – corned beef and hotdog and fried rice and coffee (yummy!).

We left the house pass 7am. My dad took me to the DOH. “The early bird award goes to. . . . ME”. An hour later, the other interpreters arrived. We waited there for about 2 hours. The DOH’s driver drove us to Polloc. It was only a 30-minute ride from the city, then another 10 minutes from the port to the ship. Before heading to the ship, they took x-ray of my “healthy” lungs.

We met up with Rob, the coordinator to the interpreters, toured us around the ship. Rob introduced John Hensley and Tommy Short. They asked who will do night shift, since I am a night person, I volunteered myself. Just imagine, I am already up by 5 in the morning and will work nights, not just a night shift, a 12-hours night shift. I’m used to night shifts but only 8 hours, from 11pm until 7am. I was assigned in ICU, and I’m expecting a toxic patients, but it’s way far from the patients in the ICU that I have encountered when I was still in college. During college, my duty group was always put in the Surgery ICU, so the patients there are deadly - hourly vital signs, which we do it manually. Unlike in the ICU in the ship, they all have monitors; they just have to copy what’s on the screen. I met a lot of people in ICU, there’s Jinn, Eric, Cormier, Lt. Armstrong, McKenna, and I forgot the name of the others. They were nice. They treated me good and fed me some information regarding medical stuff. Even Cormier taught me how to insert an IV and withdraw a blood. Because here in the Philippines you have to a an IV therapist before you can insert an IV. You have to undergo and IV training seminar and complete a certain number of insertions. And for the blood withdrawal, the medical technologist do that thing, not nurses. I practiced on Eric and Cormier’s forearm. Thanks guys!

I was supposed to be in the ship for 6 days only, but I stayed there for 9 days. During my 9 days stay, I only went ashore once. That’s on the 4^th of June, and went back the following day. That 9 days, I work nights in the ICU, but since there are times that we don’t have patients in the ICU, I went down to Ward 1 to stay with my friends. Charren was in Ward 1 for 2 days, Meds then Jed. Sometimes night shift can be bored too. Good thing my long time friends were there, Jed and Meds (Leng-leng). There’s also Jay-jay, Chao and Omeng

FYI: Jed is my next-door neighbor since we were 6 or 7 years old. And Leng-leng and Caho, we’ve known each other since we were in kindergarten. I met Jay-jay and Omeng during high school. This adventure is the greatest because I had the opportunity to share it with them

How I wish we could have stayed a little longer in the ship or we could come with them to Manila. Hehehe